{"id":308890,"date":"2019-04-04T07:08:43","date_gmt":"2019-04-04T05:08:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=308890"},"modified":"2019-04-04T07:08:43","modified_gmt":"2019-04-04T05:08:43","slug":"5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-527","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/308890\/5-important-things-happening-in-south-africa-today-527\/","title":{"rendered":"5 important things happening in South Africa today"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s what is happening in and affecting South Africa today:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Eskom chairman Jabu Mabuza says the company<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/af.reuters.com\/article\/southAfricaNews\/idAFJ8N20F02H\"> needs to get rid of R250 billion in debt for it to function and operate the way the country needs it to.<\/a><\/strong> Eskom&#8217;s current debt is sitting at R420 billion, and is the biggest liability on treasury&#8217;s books. [Reuters]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>The IEC has received objections to 53 politicians on electoral lists of 9 parties &#8211; <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/mg.co.za\/article\/2019-04-03-iec-anc-lists\">with over 20 objections on the ANC list, alone.<\/a> <\/strong>The ANC is being criticised for including names accused of corruption, or found by the courts to have violated their oaths. [Mail &amp; Guardian]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>South African trade and industry minister Rob Davies has penned a <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.businesslive.co.za\/bd\/opinion\/2019-04-04-rob-davies-how-brexit-will-affect-sa-uk-trade-relations\/\">detailed breakdown of how the UK&#8217;s Brexit mess will affect South Africa<\/a><\/strong>, including the state of trade agreements and ongoing negotiations to ensure we are not too heavily impacted. [BusinessLive]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>64 JSE listed companies have rotated auditors, 4 years before the practice is to be made mandatory &#8211; <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.moneyweb.co.za\/news\/south-africa\/audit-rotation-hits-kpmg-benefits-rivals\/\">and KPMG has emerged as the biggest loser, have lost 20 contracts since 2017.<\/a> <\/strong>KPMG suffered major reputational damage for its role in auditing Gupta companies during the period. [Moneyweb]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>South Africa\u2019s rand strengthened on Wednesday as hopes of a trade deal between the United States and China bolstered risk appetite globally, while stocks also strengthened in line with global market optimism. <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.xe.com\/currencyconverter\/convert\/?Amount=1&amp;From=USD&amp;To=ZAR\">On Thursday the rand was at R14.14 to the dollar, R18.63 to the pound and R15.89 to the euro.<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Eskom says it needs to get rid of R250 billion in debt to function properly; the IEC received objections to 53 politicians from 9 parties; here&#8217;s how the Brexit mess will impact South Africa; and KPMG has lost 20 auditing contracts since 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":75316,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872,23],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-308890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-government","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308890"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":308894,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308890\/revisions\/308894"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}